Only made it to the ridge above Baldy Bowl because I didn't have enough time to get to the top and make it all the way back down so that I could be at work at 2pm. I'm going back on Monday and Wednesday, this is the begining of my training for Mt. Shasta and Mt. Rainier.

3h 48m! We ran up and down the backbone, and it was fun! Finally got the three saintly mountains of socal! Worst view of the three,a really smoggy day.After spending a year training in the San Gorgonio wilderness, this was a walk in the park!

Hiked up late Friday night and spent the night on the summit. Beautiful full moon. Didn't even need to turn my headlamp on. Didn't see a soul until about 9:00 a.m. on Saturday when the day-hikers began congregating.

This was my first mountain above 10k ft. All-in-all, it went well. I climbed the devils backbone trail after mistakenly going directly up the ski slopes, which were quite steep. At times they were over 35% grade. Not having done much climbing before this, I started at a blistering pace....progressively slowing until the lodge at the top of the first ski slope.

After that, all went well. I summitted and was back at my car in about 4 hours. I basically ran down the hill because I was afraid that my rental car would be locked in the parking area.

Great weather, but the view was increasingly obscured by smoke from the Esperanza fire. Lots of people out on the trail and summit. Couldn't find a summit register, but enjoyed a nice long rest reclining in one of the many windbreaks. My first SoCal highpoint.

Finally got around to hiking it 8 years after I moved out of the LA area. Fun hike, but very hot and exposed to the sun. Heatwave in SoCal at that time. Ran low on water, stumbled out to my truck ... thank heavens there was a small pub just down the road!

The 8000 Meter Challenge is a competition sponsored by JanSport between all outdoor retail companies; for example REI, SportChalet and Adventure 16. You have to summit Mt. Baldy, San Gorgonio Mountain and San Jacinto Peak in 24 hours. This was the first of the three peaks. We all began hiking at 4:50am, I summited at 6:57am and arrived back at the cars at 8:20. Total hiking time was 3 hours and 30 minuets. It was a very beautiful day and temperatures were nice throughout the hike.

Went with my friend Bill who wanted to hike up under the ski lift and do the Backbone Trail. Kinda crazy but we did it. Gorgeous day with a nice cool breeze. That first part was steep, 1300' in a mile. We're training for Whitney in a couple of weeks. Nice day.

I've hiked up Baldy so many times, I can't even count them all. My favorite time was when clouds covered the earth at 6000' feet. All the peaks around SoCal were identifiable, but the smog and garbage was not!

Magnificent when the views are clear, pretty good even when they aren't.

Got on the trail at 8:15 and was on the summit by 11:30 after a nice stop at the Ski Hut. Broke in my new climbing partner Elliot with his first 10k peak. Loved the bowl on the way up and had a good time on the backbone on the way down. Had a nice little jaunt over to the west peak.